A $1,400,000 Beatdown?

DETROIT — A white, former Detroit-area police officer was found guilty Thursday of assault and misconduct in the bloody beating of a black driver during a traffic stop that was captured on video.

Wayne County jurors handed down the verdict in the case against William Melendez, who was charged in the January beating of Floyd Dent. Police stopped Dent, 58, in the Detroit suburb of Inkster for disregarding a stop sign, and dashcam video from a police vehicle shows Melendez punching him 16 times in the head.

It wasn’t until after WDIV-TV aired the footage in March that Melendez was fired. Inkster later agreed to pay $1.4 million to Dent, who suffered broken ribs, blood on his brain and other injuries.

The jurors found Melendez guilty of assault with intent to do great bodily harm and of misconduct in office. They cleared him of a charge of assault by strangulation.